I am pleased to announce the birth of a new independent
web site I am maintaining together with Steve Newcomb.
This web site is devoted to our work in progress on topic maps. We
have published a draft of the processing model for topic
maps on which we are working on, now called
"Topicmaps.net's Processing Model". This document will be
updated and completed.

We also intend to publish information on the work we are
starting on convergence between RDF and Topic Maps on
this site.

We are interested to publish links from this web site to
any application, or development of interest in that area
(i.e., Processing models, RDF/Topic Maps convergence).

Please send me a mail (mailto:mb@infoloom) if there is
information you want us to insert.

I am happy to announce the availability of a new web site on topic
maps, called "topicmaps.net". This site will contain the current work
in progress on topic maps that Steve Newcomb and I are doing. A new
version of the Processing Model for XTM is available, and is now
called the "Topicmaps.net's Processing Model".

I have resigned from TopicMaps.Org as well as from the XTM Authoring
Group (together with Steve Newcomb). It is most important to me that
the topic maps community understand why I have done so. The following
circumstances have contributed to my decision:

- I have been able, as co-chair, to lead the work in the XTM Authoring
Group until the Core Deliverables (XTM 1.0) were published, as
planned, on December 4, 2000 at the XML 2000 Conference in
Washington. I have been publicly announcing the release of version
1.0, committing to the fact that the DTD was stable, as were the
published subject indicators and the conformance clause.

- At the January Meeting of the XTM Authoring Group, there were
disagreements coming from the Group and Steve and I were denied
authority to continue the work as editors, in a normal way. Any
change that we would ever want to introduce for the sake of
consistency had to be submitted to the group for vote. Since this
process was going to delay the work of the group, I have preferred
resigning as editor in favor of those who were able to perform this
task with more authority. To me, the most important was to have the
specification be published as quickly as possible, while the windows
of opportunity were still open.

- My resignation had an unexpected result that the process went
quicker and the work for publishing the full version of XTM 1.0 was
completed. The new editors have worked very hard to
make it possible. The decision to transfer the editorship to a new
team should therefore be considered positive in all respects.

- Unfortunately, several errors appear to have been made. The names of
the original editors and co-editors have been replaced by the names
of the newly appointed editors, causing confusion among the
community. The published subject indicator list which was announced
in December as dependable, and not subject to changes that might
cause referencing documents to lose their value was shortened and
most of them were removed. The Processing Model, published as a draft
as part of the December 4 deliverables, was removed and replaced by
an annex F, "Processing Requirements", which was incompatible and is
judged misleading by the previous editors, because it emphasizes
syntactical aspects without telling anything about the actual
meaning of the specification and how applications are supposed to
understand it. Furthermore, annex F is presented as "informative",
while the conformance clause has been changed in such a way as to
require all XTM applications and topic maps to conform to annex F.

I decided to resign altogether when I learned that a plan had been
put in motion whereby the processing model for the XTM syntax would
not be developed independently by the XTM group, but rather by an
ISO-based group, under ISO rules, beginning with a requirements
analysis and ending at some indefinite future date with an ISO
standard query language for topic maps. My understanding of the
mission of the XTM group was inconsistent with this plan: to publish
a Web-oriented specification for topic maps, and to do it more
quickly than any other standardization process could do it, mostly
by relying heavily on work already done over the past several
years.

All these factors prevented me from having any clear vision on how
to go further. Topic Maps have been receiving quite a bit of
interest lately and there is a strong desire to harmonize with the
W3C's RDF recommendation. I remain convinced that if all people
involved in the process recognize the interest of agreeing on a
single way of understanding of what an interchangeable topic map
really means (this might take some time), all opinions should be
expressed. Steve Newcomb and I are continuing to contribute the
discussion in several ways. We are proposing a graph-based
processing model (see http://www.topicmaps.net) a study on RDF and
Topic Maps, and other relevant work.

Although the current situation is far from ideal, it can also be
interpreted as a sign of good health that many initiatives, coming
from different people, are out there, everybody trying to convince
others of the interest of his/her approach to topic maps. The
discussions I have been having recently make me optimistic about a
positive outcome. It looks like there are many people who are
looking for improving consistency between the various approaches.

We are not claiming, for now, that there is any official
status to the ideas or materials we are publishing at
http://www.topicmaps.net.